Wigan Athletic 1 Tottenham 0: HARRY REDKNAPP returned to London from Lancashire last night to attend a dinner at the Savoy to celebrate 25 years in football management.
Had he been told when stepping into the dug-out as manager for the first time at Bournemouth that a quarter of a century later he would be taking teams to Wigan and losing, Redknapp might have wondered how far his career would actually have progressed.
He has achieved plenty since 1983 but so have Wigan, whose sixth win in seven Premier League matches pushed them to where Tottenham would like to be - on the fringes of qualifying for European football.
Redknapp, meanwhile, finds himself back in a relegation battle with Spurs and admitted last night that too many members of his squad lack the fight needed to pull out of the bottom three.
"It looks like we have a certain type of player right through," Redknapp said. "The bench have plenty of flair but we are in a relegation scrap and we need men, we need characters to get out of it. We have some but not enough and that is the problem. You would put your life on Ledley King, you would put your life on Jonathan Woodgate or Michael Dawson . . . we have some." And then his voice, like his team's performance, trailed off.
What also gnawed at the Tottenham manager was his side's loss of concentration in the final minutes. It cost his side points at West Bromwich Albion and Newcastle United and did so again here.
The corner from Ryan Taylor that delivered Wigan's last-gasp goal was routine but Dawson had been taken off with a concussion and in his place was Jermaine Jenas, a midfielder with a midfielder's instincts.
A natural centre-half like Dawson would have sensed the danger from Maynor Figueroa sooner but, once the Honduran's head connected with the ball, his first goal for Wigan was unstoppable. While Tottenham have one foot in Wembley, this was their fifth league game without a victory. "Of course I am concerned," Redknapp said.
"You look at Tottenham's results in the last year and you would be concerned. When I came here they had two points from eight games. Scary, isn't it? Look at their results after the League Cup final and see how many points they got."
He added that it was up to the players to dig Spurs out of a mess of their own creation. "After all, it was them who got us in it," he said.
Jermain Defoe's debut after his return from Portsmouth was different from all his others in that it not only failed to produce a goal, it was also completely innocuous.
